Ok, well this is the whole point isn't it? If Vermeer used technology, was he not an artist? Ridiculous! Some folks are of the opinion that photography and digital work are not art because of the technology; as if the computer could produce work like Matt Mahurin's just by being switched on; as if a camera can see and frame things in the viewfinder, adjust it's own aperture, decide it's own depth of field, choose it's own film speed. Do we question a poet's validity because he uses a thesaurus or (gasp) a rhyming dictionary?
A camera or a computer can only obey. They are tools. Art and technology have been hand-in-hand for centuries, maybe even millennia. This is because artists are the ones who smash disparate thoughts together and make "A" and 2 = tree-frogs. Picasso becomes a film buff and we get women with 3 boobs. Artists are the ones who see the possibilities in any new technology. Artists and scientists are cousins.
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